-pictures were removed and they were asked to describe what each looked like: groups with the explanation (inferences, connections) were better at remembering them

naïve psychology

-a commonsense level of understanding of other people and oneself; present in children starting at the age of 3

-2 concepts central to understanding behavior: beliefs and desires

-even infants have a simple theory of naïve psychology, probably as a result of their intense interest in people

intention

the goal of acting in a certain way

Joint attention

in which two or more people focus deliberately on the same item

Intersubjectivity

the mutual understanding that people share during communication

theory of mind

-the basic understanding of how the mind works and how it influences behavior

-can be tested using the 'false belief' test: crayons not in box, candles actually! What does snoopy think?

-Wellman suggested that preschoolers' TOM includes the knowledge that beliefs often originate in perceptions

-the ability to attribute mental states (beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge) to oneself & others & to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that can be different from one's own; a well-organized understanding of how the mind works and how it influences behavior; NOT fully developed until about 4 y/o

The Development of Theory of Mind Is Explained By Multiple Theories:

1) Theory of Mind Module (TOMM) - Nativist

2) Interactions with Other People - Empiricists

3) Processing Skills - General Information

False-Belief Task & Autism

-children with autism find false-belief tasks difficult to solve even when they are teenagers; also have difficulty:

1) establishing joint attention

2) developing language skills

3) understanding that beliefs affect behavior

-overall have impaired mind reading mechanisms

Pretend play

when children create new, symbolic situations

sociodramatic play

pretending certain objects represent others

imaginary friends

-as many as 63% of interviewed children ages 3-4 and

again at 7-8 have imaginary companions at one or both ages (Taylor 1999)

-NO difference in personality or intelligence found in children w/ imaginary friends compared to those without

Knowledge of Living Things

4 & 5 y/o: children have a great knowledge of living things; are fascinated about them

-still have limited reasoning skills

Distinguishing People from Nonliving Things

Poulin-Dubois task: a person or a robot moved an object; both 9- and 12-month-olds show surprise when they see

inanimate objects move on their own

Nativists and Empiricists believe that Children acquire biological knowledge differently:

•nativists: biology module

•empiricists: personal observations and other people

red flags for autism:

1) no babbling by 1 year

2) hasn't said their first word by 16 months

3) not stringing two or more words together by 2 years of age

-children appear to be deaf; often don't respond to name under 1 year

-language delays; rarely respond to their name

-don't turn to look when you point at something (failure to achieve joint attention)

-social difficulties

-don't draw attention to themselves

-can have unusual behaviors/movements (spinning, toe-walking)

Self-locomotion

a sense of space independent of a child's own location

dead reckoning

the process of calculating one's current position by using a previously determined position, and advancing that position based upon known or estimated speeds over elapsed time, and course

-(the cardinal rule) the last counting word indicates "how many" of the collection

-if you ask a child who is just learning to count how many items she just counted, she may recount!

-with counting practice, children learn to abstract this rule, and they find that the last number word is not an attribute of the last object counted, but an attribute of the entire collection as a whole

order irrelevance

Objects can be counted in any order

-a child can label objects with different numbers and the count will remain the same

abstraction

-any kind of object can be collected and counted

-ex. Children can count jumps, the number of dog barks, or the missing eggs from an egg carton

counting abilities are incfluenced by culture:

-children all over the world learn number words, the rate at which they do so is affected by the system of number words in their culture

-one reason for the faster development of Chinese children's counting ability appears to be that the Chinese words for numbers in the teens follow a consistent pattern, in contrast to the English words

now from study guides

category hierarchy

-categories that are related by set-subset relations

-the tool/screwdriver/flat-head screwdriver relation is an example of this

perceptual categorization

the grouping together of objects with similar appearances

-this is a major component of infants' conceptual thinking, and often involves color or size

essentialism

the belief that living things have an essence inside them that makes them what they are

-ex: preschoolers' belief that cows have a certain 'cowness' that they inherit from their parents (lol)